Tag Archive: A Clockwork Orange

It was late summer back in 1994. I had gradiated from Olde Genevieve, but college hadn’t started yet. I was in a dawg haus with my girlyfriend’s parents from which I was never destined to emerge. Nevertheless, we went to the movies one night. It was a strange crowd. One that never really hung out together. In addition to me and the Drama Queen, the Artistic One and Top Gear were with us. Now, to this day the Artistic One and Top Gear remain polar opposites on the electromagnetic spectrum, so yeah, it was weird. But we were all out to see Ollie Stone’s latest controversial flick, a little ditty named Natural Born Killers. It was supposed to be uber-violent and edgy, kinda like a modern A Clockwork Orange. And usually that kind of thing would have been right up the Artistic One’s alley, but for some reason he didn’t take to it and he stepped out to smoke a ciggy. And strangely enough, so did the Drama Queen, even though she didn’t smoke. But it kind of got my proverbial goat, ’cause I had this weird vendetta against cigs since mi padre died when I was a wee lad, so it put me in a bad mood. And it was just me and Top Gear watching the movie, and he was pretty much hating every minute of it. So about halfway through (right about when Mickey and Mallory go into the drugstore to get the snakebite juice) we all bailed. Which is okay…the second half of the movie is rubbish anyway. But it was just a strange night, and it wound up being the last movie the Drama Queen and I would ever see together.

The connection here is that the song “Sweet Jane” features very prominently in the movie and on its soundtrack. In fact, it’s sort of Mickey and Mallory’s theme and it comes back several times in the movie when ever they have a romantic scene. But it’s not the Lou Reed version of the song, it’s a cover done by the Cowboy Junkies. And all through college I used to love that version of the song. Its mellow and soothing and the slide guitar just relaxes my mind and the la la section at the end takes me to another place. Actually, the entire NBK soundtrack is killer (forgive the pun) and features tons of really great songs. It was pretty much hand selected by Mercer, Pennsylvania’s favorite son and was Trenton’s first foray in cinema music (he’d win an Oscar later on for The Social Network original score). And “Burn” may be the best non-album NIN track.

But as good as the soundtrack is, the movie pretty much is crap. Even Woody Harrelson and Robert Downey Jr. can’t save it. And that’s despite being written by my favorite auteur, Quentin Tarantino (sort of). As the story goes, after Tarantino had dropped out of high school and was working at the video store, he wrote three scripts: True Romance, Natural Born Killers, and Reservoir Dogs. Well, he wanted to make Dogs himself, so he sold the other two to finance it. True Romance wound up being made by Tony Scott (who changed the ending), and Oliver Stone picked up NBK. The thing is, he completely rewrote it…so much so that QT asked to have his name taken off it (he still gets a story credit). Now, I’ve read the original script, and its basically a crime drama (much like the rest of QT’s early work). But Stone decided to make it a media statire and his transparent moralizing ruins the film. And the 8 million cuts are bizarre and fairly obvious (“hey look, it’s Mickey’s inner demon!”). Its sort of an attempt at 90s psychedelia, but it doesn’t work and it hasn’t aged well.

So I picked up this album a year or so ago at the east side Half Price Books that used to off Brice Road (it recently moved all the way up to McNaughten). They were playing it over the sound system while I was browsing, and when I got up to the register I asked how much it was and the clerk said $6.99 American and I said “I’ll take it!” (probably without that much enthusiasm). As far as the music goes, I dig the songs Lou Reed sings and not much else. Doug Yule just really doesn’t do it for me. But hey, at least Nico was long gone by this point. Actually, Lou Reed was gone too by the time this was released…on to a stellar solo career (minus that one collaboration a few years ago with Metallica…ugh, that record is terrible!).

Other lists: “Sweet Jane” is #342 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

Ch-ch-changes: Even the Velvets are not immune to the critical darling that is Kid A and drop one spot from their original position of #109.

My favorite track: “Sweet Jane”

Honorable mention: “Rock & Roll”

Quote: “Then one fine mornin’ she puts on a New York station, she couldn’t believe what she heard at all. She started dancin’ to the fine fine music, you know her life was saved by rock ‘n’ roll.”